The Ridiculousness of the Bail Out

When you get Digby over at Hullabaloo adding to quotes from Atrios at Eschaton, you know there should be a warning sign:

It's a little weird that reporters are hesitant to clearly spell out what happened. Basically the Fed printed a huge amount of money. Some of that money they used to do what TARP was originally supposed to do, buy up Big Shitpile at inflated prices. Some of that money they lent to banks at basically 0 interest. Of course there were plenty of other things they could have done with 2 trillion bucks, if preserving the executive compensation at megabanks wasn't thought to be crucial for the survival of the economy. They could have dropped it from helicopters. They could have paid off mortgages directly. They could have given it to state governments. They could have bought me a SUPERTRAIN. But, no, they decided that propping up an obviously failed system of financial intermediaries was the important thing, so that's what they did.

The ruling elites believed that the best way to bring back the economy was to ensure that jackasses like Fabrice Tourre weren't unduly inconvenienced, the thought being that even though they were the ones who caused the problems, we couldn't possibly do without them. And we the proletariat are supposed to be so grateful that they left Ponzi in place to further steal from us in the future. This was the problem with leaving Geithner, Bernanke, and Summers on the payroll and keep bringing Greenspan back to testify and guide the idiots.

I agree with Digby and Atrios that we could have spent that money smarter and in a way that it would have resulted in a lasting legacy of infrastructure for generation to come. But NO we had to ensure that the Fabulous Fabrice got his bonus.